Got your Space-Sickness pills?

Eposode IV : A Distant Hope .

(please note that all the scientific stuff in this post is factual, surrounded by my verbosity)

Space travel huh? Yeah, well, ok, we have allegedly done it between here and the moon. Takes three days and nights to go each way.

Pretty slow by most standards, but it is the fastest we can attain at present.

The science writers would like to believe that one day we will travel along with light at more or less the same speed. (nothing can accelerate to beyond the speed of light, but you can come as close to it as physics will allow).

If we were to do this, they say, interstellar space travel would be a reality.

Most scientists agree that this may well come about. Just a matter of engineering. It would still take the craft 4.2 years to get to the nearest star, but hey, that's physics!

But there is a more burning problem, not even realised by most people. Interstellar space is not empty. In fact it is populated by at least one proton per liter. Buzzing through this "density" at near light speed would mean that even a single proton would go straight through a normal hull, not to mention any passengers.

And travelling so fast would mean you would get a lot of them since you travel so far in a short space of time.

Simply put, if the ship did not fall apart from hull breaches, the passengers would be dead from radiation poisoning long before they had gone a light month!

Given that attaining super velocities is an incredible hurdle to overcome, the problems don't end there. Some way has to be found to deflect these "protons" from our desired trajectory before they fry us. It has been suggested that an enormous dipole magnetic field facing forward would be of help.

Theoretically, yes, as Brent Spiner would say.

But there is still a problem. The dust. Cosmic specks of matter that are uncharged and hence cannot be deflected by a magnet. it is known to exist in vast quantities from the pictures taken of distant galaxies. Even one of these, at such extreme velocities, would destroy the ship.

It has been conjectured that an ion gun, forward facing, could put a charge on these specks, and our dipole magnet could deflect them.

Problem solved? No way. The ship is travelling at near light-speed, and the effects of having a forward-pointing ion cannon, whose ions travel at near the same speed, will have to involve relatavistic dynamics, and the equations for these calculations are formidable to say the least. And then there are the equations for the deflecting magnetic field, which also travels forward at the speed of light....

My point is, that the road to "Stardom" is not just beset by the "speed" problem.

This is why I love my physics. I get to understand, for free, a lot more than I actually set out to do.